Benchmarks make gap down start on weak global cues

The Indian equity markets have made a gap down start tracking weak global cues. The US markets plunged overnight after all the hopes of recovery in Europe were dashed by the German finance minister’s comments, while all the Asian counterparts were trading in the negative terrain at this point of time, indicating somber investors’ sentiment. Back home, Sensex fell below its crucial 16,800 mark, while Nifty slipped below the 5,050-mark, with selling witnessed in software stocks after software exporter-TCS- has reported slightly lower than estimated numbers for the second quarter. The group has posted a net profit of Rs 2301.00 crore for July-September quarter as compared to Rs 2169.21 crore for the same quarter last year, up 6.08%. On the sectoral front, software, technology and realty remained the top losers on the BSE sectoral space while, there were no gainer on the index. The broader indices too were struggling to get some traction and were trading in the red at this point of time while, the market breadth has made a negative start; there were 449 shares on the gaining side against 1,080 shares on the losing side while 63 shares remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex opened at 16,817.38; about 207 points lower compared to its previous closing of 17,025.09, and has touched a high and a low of 16,824.76 and 16,761.33 respectively.

The index is currently trading at 16,787.70, down by 237.39 points or 1.39%. There were 5 stocks advancing against 25 declines on the index.

The overall market breadth has made a somber start with only 28.20% stocks advancing against 67.84% declines. The broader indices too were bleeding badly; the BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices were down by 1.05% and 0.79% respectively.

IT down by 3.10%, TECk down by 2.71%, Realty down by 1.98%, Metal down by 1.73% and CG down by 1.63%, were the top losers on the index. While, there were no gainers on the index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Coal India up by 1.99%, NTPC up by 0.80%, Maruti Suzuki up by 0.57%, Hero Motocorp up by 0.50% and Tata Power was up by 0.10%.

On the flip side, TCS down by 7.33%, Hindaclo down by 3.38%, Tata Steel down by 3.13%, Wipro down by 3.00% and Tata motors down by 2.82% were the top losers on the index.

Meanwhile, Ministers from India and United Kingdom have agreed to work towards a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which will aim at enhancing cooperation and deepening the engagement in the areas of capacity building, land economics, heritage management, sustainable master planning, transport planning etc between the two nations. Kamal Nath, Minister of Urban Development and Gregory Clark, Minister of State for Decentralization and Cities agreed to work towards the MoU which will also see the two countries co-operating in the area of sharing of knowledge in the formulation of Public Private Partnership Models.

India’s urban development minister, who participated in a meeting of the UK India Urban Infrastructure Group organized by the UK Business Council and UK Trade & Investment, opined that ‘the challenges of urbanization in India were huge, both in significance and scale and the India government is keen on bridging the Urban Infrastructure deficit by benefiting from the wealth of experience of the UK Government in the urban sector.’

The UK India Urban Infrastructure Group has proposed conducting an Urban Regeneration Scoping Study to be fully funded by UK Government and Private Sector Participants for the city of Kolkata. The above group has also proposed to cooperate in the development of a ‘Regeneration Master Plans’ that would entail developing a sustainable master plan on a ‘holistic basis’ setting out recommendations in relation to the phased regeneration and planned development of urban infrastructure with environment and sustainability at the core. This could be demonstrated by adopting a satellite town to deploy UK expertise.

The meeting was attended by several UK Companies including ARUP, Biwater International Ltd., Clifford Chance LLP, JCB, KPMG LLP (UK), Mott MacDonald Group and Serco Group.
 
The S&P CNX Nifty opened at 5,049.45; about 70 points lower compared to its previous closing of 5,118.25, and has touched a high and a low of 5,057.50 and 5,039.00 respectively.

The index is currently trading at 5,043.80, down by 74.45 points or 1.45%. There were 11 stocks advancing against 39 declines on the index.

The gainers of the Nifty were Coal India up by 2.06%, NTPC up by 1.01%, GAIL up by 1.00%, BPCL up by 0.97% and Maruti Suzuki up by 0.95%.

TCS down by 7.25%, HCL Tech down by 6.46%, Hindalco down by 3.38%, Tata Steel by 3.31% and JP Associates was down by 3.12%, were the major losers on the index.

All the Asian equity indices were trading in the red; Shanghai Composite was down 40.82 points or 1.67% to 2,399.58, Hang Seng was down 630.68 points or 3.34% to 18,243.31, Jakarta Composite was down 105.94 points or 2.84% to 3,623.08, KLSE Composite was down 27.73 points or 1.89% to 1,437.62, Nikkei 225 was down 129.76 points or 1.46% to 8,749.84, Straits Times was down 48.76 points or 1.75% to 2,730.21, Seoul Composite was down 27.46 points or 1.47% to 1,837.72 and Taiwan Weighted was down by 124.59 points or 1.67% to 7,336.53.